Ontological argument

ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT 

A01

ANSELM:  Linguistically proof god exists

A priori.

-> god is perfect 

The perfect being must be real, bc to be perfect they have to be real.

-god is perfect. And to e a perfect, he must exist. 

-> so- god, a perfect being, must exist  

Predicate of god is existence, necessary being

1. If we imagine God’s perfections, we will agree that God is perfect.
2.  Something which exists in reality is greater than something which exists in the mind.

3.         ‘God is that than which nothing greater can be imagined.’

GAUNILO:  People have dif ideas of what is perfect. 

J bc I can think of it doesn’t men it has to exist.

We are not able to think of a perfect island, as everyone has a different concept, and it can always be improved. Perfection is not a quality and just because we can imagine something it does not mean it has to exist

ANSELM RESPONSE:  replies G hasn’t understood, ONLY god has all perfections and his argument can only be applied to God, everything else has relative perfections. 

Says g is talking abt contingent things whereas he is taking abt god (not contingent)

Islands are contingent objects and so can never be perfect. God is a necessary being: De re Necessary. God must necessarily exist, as perfection is one of His key qualities

MALCOLM:  God, a necessary being, has to exist, as he is  necessary. (Eg like a triangle must have 180 d and 3 sides.) 

(A priori- knowledge based upon reason)

He is necessary, so must exist. Also a predicate of god is existence, as he is our concept. 

DESCARTES:  radical doubt, once we understand certain things, certain things follow necessarily from them- eg once we understand a triangle- the fact it has 3 sides will follow- necessary- a precept of a triangle. 

Eg once you’ve understood what god is and that god has all perfections it necessarily follows that he must exist

When you imagine a triangle, it must have 3 sides otherwise it is not a triangle. This is a key quality. Existence is the same for God

AQUINAS:  doesn’t think argument is sensical- needs an a posteriori (sensory or experience based knowledge) argument

Aquinas- disagreed, 

1. we do not have an agreed definition of god. 
2. He must start from a posteriori knowledge- he believed in a natural theology

We cannot prove God a priori, God can only be known through experience: a posteriori. We should prove God’s existence using revelation, Jesus, and natural theology (the Cosmological and Teleological argument.) THE 5 WAYS!

HUME:  whatever we can say exists, we can also say may not exist, we need evidence to say it does exist. You cannot argue a priori for the existance for anything. To then prove it exists we need a posteriori arguments.

All faith is absurd and God is not able to be proven. However, we should trust our senses for information, so he would agree with…